Anaesthesia:

A story of love, war and addiction

In the first frantic year of World War 1 London, Jan Strang, the son of a Swedish timber merchant and Lucy Green, daughter of a suburban postmaster become lovers, marry and live with Jan’s cosmopolitan parents. Jan introduces Lucy to a new world of experiences and temptations. But then Jan goes off to fight.

When he returns from his stint as a Second Lieutenant on the Front Line, Lucy quickly discovers he has returned a very different man from the one she married: wounded, battle-scarred and hooked on morphine. Can Lucy’s love, faith and inner strength heal his deepest wounds?

With a host of memorable characters, including the scruffy terrier Tinker, the ultimately optimistic Anaesthesia takes us on a gripping atmospheric journey from a London in confusion in 1915 over to Belgium and France and back again to a war-weary Britain. One is left wondering which is the real battle: the one in Europe or the battle of love over addiction.

Juke box Britain:

Americanisation and youth culture 1945 – 60

There were less than 100 jukeboxes in Britain in 1945 and over 13,000 by 1958.

Over the same period, there was a similar unprecedented expansion of casual youth venues in the form of cafés, snack, milk and coffee bars where young people could hear the sounds of hot American jazz and rock ‘n’ roll. Find out more